birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy,
tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A
forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so
the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both
cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A
sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because,
by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the
materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a
sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own,
apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from
fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not
grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the
fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived
from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct
of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of
the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that
when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need
tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by
being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of
three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like
romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales--because they find them
romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to
whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This
proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of
interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to
refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They
make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment,
that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and